Why is there so much bickering on our County Commission? | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: This article originally appeared in the Beaufort Observer.

In this two-part series we'll explain

    Most experienced observers of governing boards sooner or later learn that what you see in the formal meetings is only the tip of the iceberg of what is really going on below the surface. There are always at least two agendas, one you see and the other hidden, and often as not, there are multiple hidden agendas. This was recently perfectly illustrated in a story that was reported by WNCT-TV.

    Last week (10-1-14) must have been a slow news day at WNCT-TV. Josh Birch and his editor tried to create some news, and as they often do, they turned to Hood Richardson to stir things up on a slow day. Actually, sources tell us it was a attempted setup orchestrated by the Republican Club, using one of its prime antagonists, Cathy Vasquez. Here's the story Channel 9 put out: Click here to watch the video.

    Birch's attempt to try to spin the story as a racial incident fell flat. Even the supposed target (Jerry Langley) did not take it as a racial comment. But Vasquez was successful—in a fashion—in duping Birch into playing it as such. For his part Birch used video supplied by Vasquez and spliced in snippets of file footage to concoct a story, such as it was. Here's what's really going on.

    Jerry Langley is a totally ineffective chairman. His modus operandi is to corral four votes and ram anything through he wants, or block anything he doesn't want. He has no leadership skills in making a group function effectively, much less bringing it together in common accord, as one man in the video thinks should be done. The problem is ineffective group leadership skills, pure and simple. Because of this ineffectiveness on the part of the chairman the meetings often disintegrate into chaos. This appears to the unknowing or casual observers as "bickering" because they don't know the background of what they see. Birch would not know this because he seldom attends the meetings, except to run in and pick up a few feet of video footage. He's never been known to sit through a meeting to watch the nuances on display.

    Hood Richardson is Langley's antagonist. He is cast in that role because of the way Langley and his three puppets (Belcher, Booth and RINO Al Klemm) use shear voting power to bulldoze the board. The way they prefer to operate is to get together outside the meeting and decide what they'll do. They then come in, somebody puts a motion forth, Hood and occasionally Stan Deatherage, rant a while and then they vote 4-3 to cram the issue through. Hood knows what he says will not change the vote. But he plays the role of whistleblower to let the public see it is just a charade.

    Part of this is the result of the electoral system used to elect the Board of Commissioners. The Limited Voting System means that to get elected you have to appeal to a critical mass of voters across the county who basically are of the same mindset (political philosophy) and get them out to vote. Those people want to see their representative stand up for what they believe. If this block of voters is opposed to what the Gang of Four is doing they want to hear someone express their opposition, no matter whether the final vote is won or not.

    The alternative can be seen in our school board. That board is elected by districts. That means each member must cater to a prescribed geographical area. The trick then is to corral members from other areas to support what you want to get done. If you can do that and your district thinks it gets "its share" then you get re-elected. We saw this in how the previous school board split up the school bond funds. Typically such a system degenerates into a "you scratch my back and when your back itches I'll scratch your's." Or, "I'll vote with you if you'll vote with me." This is not unique to our schools board. Most geographical based boards operate that way. That is most pronounced in personnel decisions and in the way capital outlay is doled out. That's how most of the bond money was doled out to Washington while Chocowinity got the short straw simply because Jay McRoy (on the County Commission) and William Warren (the Chocowinity school board member) did just the opposite of what Hood does—they went along to get along. Students in Chocowinity now sit in trailers and overcrowded classrooms in some of the worst buildings in the county while buildings elsewhere are underutilized. That's how the district system works.

    So a district system is simply another way to pervert what's best for the whole. You have to have an effective group leader to prevent this. Beaufort County does not have that in Jerry Langley and it did not have it in school board chairs Bryant Hardison and Robert Belcher.

    In personnel decisions the school board members from that district often has veto authority over who gets hired for a school in "their" district. This is particularly true when administrators are appointed. It's also true with teacher assistants unless there is a shortage of applicants. It's done so smoothly—often behind the scenes—that few people know what's going on. Certainly not a TV reporter who has no clue about what's going on behind the scenes and who has less than two minutes to explain what they did see going on. But the meetings look "cordial." So cordial that most votes are unanimous. Nonetheless, someone is calling the shots in the back room. There are hidden agendas just as in any electoral systems.

    The major difference between the way the Beaufort County Commission functions and the way the School Board functions is that Hood's rants make it obvious. The Gang of Four can't operate out of sight. For example, had it not been for Hood, and to a lesser extent Stan and Gary Brinn, we would already have a $30 million jail being constructed and Al Klemm would be running for, and getting re-elected. And he would have given away many millions more of taxpayer dollars to his cronies and called it "economic development."

    Now in fairness to Jerry, presiding over a seven-member, ideologically based board is a tough job. But an effective chairman would recognize the need to accommodate, at a minimum, the diversity of opinion such a board will always represent. Instead Langley does indeed use the "master of the plantation" leadership approach as Hood illustrates. Any legitimate student of the group decision-making process will tell you that arrogance is not an effective leadership trait and power is not an effective decision-making technique. Jerry has no clue how to produce solid group decisions on controversial matters. If this were not true we would see more votes split along different lines. The fact that most split votes are along the same faction lines simply supports our observations that what is really driving the agendas is diversity of opinion, especially when it comes to money issues.

    Students of group decision-making science would characterize Langley's approach as "power"—decision-making based on domination...just like a plantation master dominated all of the decision on the plantation. Many of us have served in groups where the "massa" dominated to get his way. There is no consensus building in such leadership.

    Consensus requires putting an issue on the table and allowing every member to express their views openly. It abhors secret, backroom deals. It insists on every member having access to the same information and every member being involved in the decision, with an opportunity to present options or alternatives and open debate so the constituents know how/why each member feels about the issue and the options. Real effective leadership seeks to discern when agreements can be achieved, if not on everything at least on those things that are not "deal breakers." Effective leaders seek "win-win" rather than "win-lose." In such a system one will hear the chairman often say something like: "so, what I hear you saying is..." or "so can we all agree that..." and he will often reframe the debate to seek common ground. During his tenure Langley has seldom, if ever, been heard to say such things.

    With that background we will, in the second part of this article, explain what was really going on this this particular meeting.